To Survive the Fallout
by Surprisingly Machiavellian
Summary: Who crawls the radioactive wasteland and grudgingly continues their own dying race? Who cowers and prays to a long-forgotten God as falling armies fight over old-world ashes? Who survived the fallout, and what do they have left? What is there to hold onto after the bombs have dropped, after the world has ended? War never changes. And the survivors damn well know it. Flash fiction.
1. Chapter 1

**So It Was Told by the Whore of Babylon...**

The life of this whore had ended before it had began. Dead in the water by the time she had taken her first breath. From then on she had become cold blooded, so much so that the Follower's doctor who delivered her had thought her dead before he saw her empty black eyes looking into his, giving off such a pervasive terror of the soul. The same way that some men were destined to be murderers or rapists or charlatans or utter failures, she had been to become a whore, her vocation having been chosen for her by some cruel, celestial rolling of a dice before her cold, dead heart had ever taken a single beat.

Her mother had died birthing her, only just seeing the face of what killed her and cursing it for its selfishness. Her father had been so distraught that he had walked out into the wastes drunk, only to be found one week later with two cazador stingers broken in his gut and his pistol in his hand, having blown his own brains out. Any family had disowned her before she could open her eyes and to try and save a future of suffering. A do-gooder dashed her head against the floor, leaving her skull permanently malformed and her brain to grow incorrectly. Even then she had survived, just as her small, cold corpse was about to be thrown into a drain. Despite all this, as a child, for a short time, she had found happiness. Before self-consciousness had become a realisation (as she could never look pretty) she had found someone to look after her and feed her. To treat her as a child should be and to give her the love that would result in a fully formed human being. They lived in a small shack in an unknown corner of Freeside, and for that small epoch, life had been perfect. But it was not to last. Gone in a manner that was so cruel and corrupting that the whore to be was left wandering for a long time before she had even completed half a decade in the wasteland.

After that, at the most innocent age of six, she was very forcefully, shown how the world had changed after the war. Where the law of man had receded and had been replaced so rapidly by the law of the crazies. Under such laws no one would bat an eye at the fact that a girl of six had been taken down an alley by a known rapist. Under such laws nobody would investigate any screams. Nobody would listen to cries of help or the youthfulness of the voice. To the youthfulness of a voice that belonged to a girl, who could have possibly, despite everything that had happened to her, made some sort of good life. Yet she was now set onto her destiny that had been chosen long ago. And like that, in the space of ten minutes, she had been deflowered. Like that, the last bits of her innocence had been stolen by a man who was entirely the good, the bad, the worst, and the rest of Vegas rolled up into one. But all she remembered of it was how soft his hand had felt leading her down that alleyway.

After that, any lingering feelings or vestiges of human compassion were gone, sucked out in a manner most ruthless and efficient at the age of six. Then on was when she became truly empty, truly cold and truly insensate. Numb would be incorrect, numb would suggest that there had once been some feelings that the numbness had replaced, or even that when the numbness was touched there would be some registering of sensation. But to her there was nothing, just existence. And to exist she did be a whore.

So that brings us to the situation that she is currently in. In a dingy rented room in Gomorrah, with a sweaty stranger pumping up and down on top of her while she stared at the wall with empty eyes, body limp and lifeless and causing the stranger to check if she was still alive half way through. As if her death would have stopped him. When he was done, he tossed her a handful of caps and was gone before she could sit up. She mechanically swung her legs over the bed, walked into the bathroom, washed herself, put her uniform back on, and headed out.

None of these men loved her. None of them cared if she was alive or dead. They only cared for that the gap between her her legs where it was lubricated and warm. They cared only that the price didn't go up, and that what they caught from her didn't last for too long and wasn't too nasty.

As she walked out of Gomorrah she knew eyes were on her, slowly moving in circles around her crotch and chest. So she danced and took men back to her room and quite literally rinsed and repeated. Come the time of her break she did not feel different, did not feel colder or warmer or more filthy or more degraded. No matter how much filth was on her skin and how much her leather smelled.

She walked into an alleyway, pulled out a cigarette and smoked. It didn't make her feel anything, or want to feel anything. It just filled up time in her existence. She was told that it would make the place look bad if she was seen to be staring at a wall during her breaks. Then she was on the floor. From the blood she saw she supposed she had been hit. Them something was pushing her down into the ground. A body. And its voice said,

"I don't think I'll pay for this."

And so she existed.

* * *

**AN: This chapter was written by Machiavellian Skulduggery, author of The Janus Faced Man, The Touch of A Lover, and Memoirs of A Desert Ranger. Check him out. The next chapter will be written by myself, Surprisingly Odd, author of Two to the Head: A Courier Six Novel. Check me out too, if you want. This is a collaboration account between the both of us, and this flash fiction came from the idea to write about the survivors of the nuclear Fallout, and the hardship and desperation that comes from pure survival.  
**

**Thanks for reading - Surprisingly Odd.**


	2. Chapter 2

**So it was told by the perfect woman...**

She was a refined woman. She prided herself on her own taste, on her eye for fashion and glamour and style. Those were not hard to come by in New Vegas. Not for a woman such as herself, so privileged, so wealthy, so utterly superior. She had been raised a proper lady, and those childhood lessons were demonstrated through every small movement she made. They were in the gentle sway of her hips, and every perfect, practised word that fell from her lips. She was a stunning woman, beautiful in every sense of the word. She wore her hair just like the women in the posters, short and curled and shining. Her dresses were spun from the most expensive fabric, enviable in colour, shape, and style. And her face... Her face was perfect. Made from smooth plastic, immaculately white from the tip of her nose and downward. Her lips were golden and full, And her eyes were framed by exquisite golden designs.

Perfect.

And her life, of course, was perfect too. The Ultra Luxe was only the finest casino and hotel in the Mojave Desert, owned by the famous White Glove Society, of which she was a prized member. People flowed in and out every day to sample their fine wines and delicious meals, and with their newly updated menu, business was better than ever. There was, as their slogan promised, _the best of everything, all in one place._ She would spend her days swimming in the pool, relaxing in the steam room, going shopping for clothes and make-up, and enjoying all the sights and sounds that New Vegas offered her. Sometimes she would see a show at The Tops, or slip off to Gomorrah to enjoy its pleasure gardens. She would always return home on time, home to the Ultra Luxe with her society surrounding her.

Perfect.

As its motto claimed, the society was t_he rebirth of luxury_. Every female member was just as elegant, just as perfectly poised, just as completely and utterly refined as she was. But they were not the same as her. They were not as admired, not as trusted. They would serve food and titter amongst themselves and enjoy all the finer things in life just as she did, but they were not her. They were not as good as her, nor would they ever be. Not even the gourmet was as valued as she was, and his meals had drawn in travellers from as far as Washington. But he only cooked the food. He did not even serve it himself; he was not the one who styled each morsel carefully on the plate to draw the eye and water the mouth.

He was not the one who caught the meals.

That was her job. Mortimer had entrusted her with the task of catching the meat, and she did so each time without fail. And that is what she was doing now, out in the solid heat of a desert night, her white dress trailing along the sand, her mask secured carefully in place, her cleaver held tightly in hand. This would be an important meal, she knew. This was the society's annual dinner, one that would dwarf the size of every other before it. The meat had to be plentiful, but not overly fat, nor overly tough. It had to be perfect. She had chosen the best animal for this meal, considerably rare in breed, and isolated in its mannerisms. She had studied it from afar for some time, just waiting to catch it. It would be in the small shack just ahead of her, right in the middle of the desert. Dark, isolated, forgotten.

Perfect.

The door wasn't even locked. It was easy for her to creep inside, survey her surroundings, sniff the air for signs of her prey. She trailed her cleaver along the walls, scraping against the paintwork and marking this territory as her own. She found the kitchen empty, with only a half-finished plate of food left to indicate life. The living room was left in a similar state of abandonment, with various items strewn about the floor.

She found the meat lying on a rickety old bed, deliciously vulnerable in its slumber. She scanned the animal hungrily, tongue flicking out to wet her lips. For a stray animal, it was in remarkably good shape. Healthy, with a certain supple quality to the skin. Mouth-watering. It had a full, thick breast, and was overall quite large in stature. She traced her eyes over every part of its body, mentally devouring every muscle. This creature was big-boned for a certainty; she could have moaned at the thought of sucking down the marrow from every bone. And there this animal was, skin flushed from heat, so scrumptiously defenceless before her.

As the man rolled over in his sleep, features relaxed by sweet unconsciousness, she knew he was the one.

"Perfect," she grinned, raising the cleaver.


End file.
